Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always for
Speaker 1: tuning in. Now picture this If you have chanced to
Speaker 1: cross this podcast and you are looking for a sign
Speaker 1: about whether or not you should listen, Imagine in your
Speaker 1: head a circle with an arrow pointing to the right.
Speaker 1: That arrow and that circle together mean go this way
Speaker 1: and something called hobo code. Uh will make sense of
Speaker 1: this all later. I hope Hi. My name is Ben. Hi,
Speaker 1: my name's Noel Squeaky Chair Brown. That's my hobo name,
Speaker 1: and I also have a squeaky chair. I've been listening
Speaker 1: back to the episodes occasionally and noticing the dulcet tones
Speaker 1: of my squeaky chair. I think it's time for a
Speaker 1: replacement there. But yeah, it's true, Ben, A hobo code
Speaker 1: is something we've delved into in the past in our
Speaker 1: other life as as conspiracy realists on stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. In fact, the very first live
Speaker 1: tour we ever did um was a live episode on
Speaker 1: that very subject. It was sort of a grab bag episode,
Speaker 1: but hobo code was one of them. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I promised myself and my daughter that I was gonna
Speaker 1: get a tattoo of this one hobo code that's like
Speaker 1: a I with like some kind of lines around it,
Speaker 1: like almost like an a frame, and it means safe harbor.
Speaker 1: I never did that thing, and my daughter won't stop
Speaker 1: ragging me about it. Um, But it's true. Ben hobo code,
Speaker 1: it's a thing. It is a secret language, which is
Speaker 1: why we covered it and stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. But today we're talking about the man, uh,
Speaker 1: the myth, the legend, the hobo King himself, super producer
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. That's right, that's right. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're talking about Leon Ray Livingstead. I am Casey Pegram.
Speaker 1: Is is his own kind of hobo king. Um. But
Speaker 1: the original hobo King, maybe not the original, but the
Speaker 1: self proclaimed hobo King a k a. A. Number one
Speaker 1: born in eighteen seventy two, died in nineteen forty four.
Speaker 1: Was what you'd call a bit of a rambling man.
Speaker 1: I know you hear about that in songs a lot.
Speaker 1: I was born a rambling man, and all that. The
Speaker 1: idea of making a living, doing the best you can,
Speaker 1: going from place to place. It's not that this is
Speaker 1: necessarily being homeless or being in any way some kind
Speaker 1: of derelict or some kind of you know, no good nick. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the edge of the hobo back in those early
Speaker 1: days was almost one of reverence. Uh. It was this
Speaker 1: idea of someone who kind of made their own way
Speaker 1: in the world and was able to just go where
Speaker 1: they wanted to and do what they wanted to and
Speaker 1: live this really freewheeling kind of lifestyle. And you think
Speaker 1: about the image of the hobo from cartoons and books
Speaker 1: and things like you know, the Grapes of Wrath. A
Speaker 1: lot of this revolved around migrant labor, work that would
Speaker 1: be seasonal perhaps, or work that would be um, you know,
Speaker 1: a particular project like building a bridge or um you know, uh,
Speaker 1: harvesting a crop and then you move on to the
Speaker 1: next job. Livingstone, however, wasn't really didn't really fit that
Speaker 1: image of the merry tramp with his bendle and his
Speaker 1: you know, his toe sticking out of his shoe, roasting
Speaker 1: his can of beans over the open fire. He was
Speaker 1: actually a pretty well dressed man. He owned a fancy
Speaker 1: suit and kind of passed for a like a middle
Speaker 1: class leave an upper class gent right, let's bust some
Speaker 1: myths or I would like to at least bust some
Speaker 1: base about the word hobo. So if you if you
Speaker 1: hear the word hobo nowadays in the West, you're going
Speaker 1: to associate it with the stick and bendle with maybe
Speaker 1: a lovable tramp hat, uh, some something like the chimney
Speaker 1: sweep and Mary Poppins plush of freight train writer. However,
Speaker 1: the word hobo or the concept of uh hobury, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm church if I'm words here. The concept
Speaker 1: there comes from the idea of migrant workers who had
Speaker 1: to travel like vagabonds from one work site to the next.
Speaker 1: There is am I would say there's a discrepancy in
Speaker 1: some of the research here because you'll hear the the
Speaker 1: da the life of a migrant worker somehow romanticized. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was very much not the case. The rise of
Speaker 1: the hobo is a very old story. So in post
Speaker 1: Civil War America, hobo's were seen as somehow a bit
Speaker 1: of metonymy for the US at large. They were seen
Speaker 1: as avatars of this rugged identity, this pioneer lifestyle. Everything
Speaker 1: west of the Mississippi right you light out for the territories,
Speaker 1: as Mark Twain said, you're taking on odd jobs. You're
Speaker 1: chasing that dream somewhere on the horizon. But during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, many people who would not just uh hop
Speaker 1: on a train and work odd jobs for fun were
Speaker 1: forced to because the economy crashed, and so the idea
Speaker 1: of being a hobo was at that time replaced. Uh,
Speaker 1: the romantic ideal was replaced by a clear picture of
Speaker 1: a nation in crisis. And we're getting some of this
Speaker 1: from a great Mental Floss article that has a contemporaneous
Speaker 1: quote about the hobo lifestyle. It says, the hobo lifestyle
Speaker 1: is one that requires skill, adaptability, and both a sense
Speaker 1: of place and lack of identification with a specific home.
Speaker 1: It's not a lifestyle everyone can follow. But no, maybe
Speaker 1: we can. Maybe we can explore a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the relationship between the railroads, the Civil War, and
Speaker 1: what we call hobo's. Absolutely, they really are kind of
Speaker 1: two sides of the same coin. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that fully applies here, but I'm working with what I got.
Speaker 1: It's a little earlier than we usually record. Um, it's
Speaker 1: true because as the railroads continued to kind of spread
Speaker 1: throughout the country, uh forty five thousand miles before eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one to around two hundred thousand miles by nineteen hundred. UM,
Speaker 1: it became pretty easy for folks to you know, hit
Speaker 1: your ride. Something we see today. Ben, you always talk
Speaker 1: about your fascination with the train hopping lifestyle and like
Speaker 1: train kids songs and you know you're here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: um and little five Points. That's a place where a
Speaker 1: lot of these these folks kind of gather and hang out.
Speaker 1: And that's a lifestyle choice largely as well, we have
Speaker 1: to remember that these individuals weren't necessarily destitute. They were deciding, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to have a stable home situation in
Speaker 1: favor of this kind of freewheeling, you know, by the
Speaker 1: seat of our pants kind of lifestyle. So it very
Speaker 1: much was something that people were doing very consciously for
Speaker 1: the most part. Um And so the interesting I was wondering,
Speaker 1: I was trying to look up like hobo seems like
Speaker 1: a portmanteau of some sort, like a combination of two
Speaker 1: sounds that are from two different words, but it's not
Speaker 1: really not. Nothing that I can find indicates that it's
Speaker 1: just sort of a word that came around to describe
Speaker 1: this type of person. Uh And there is a female
Speaker 1: equivalent called a boet, which is which seems a little
Speaker 1: diminutive and kind of sexists, sort of like a mini hobo.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what the the Internet Dictionary of Hobo
Speaker 1: Slang has to say about it. But this is something
Speaker 1: that really began to kind of take hold in popular
Speaker 1: culture in the nineteenth and early twenty centuries, um, because
Speaker 1: this really was kind of you know, people who considered
Speaker 1: themselves kind of work a day, you know, Joe's and
Speaker 1: and and Jane's. There was something to kind of envy
Speaker 1: in this lifestyle, the ability to not be tied down
Speaker 1: and to be able to go where where you wanted to.
Speaker 1: And folks like Jack London and W. H. Davies were
Speaker 1: actually you know, followed along with a lot of these
Speaker 1: types and wrote books, uh kind of you know, romanticizing
Speaker 1: this whole lifestyle. And even the character of Charlie Chaplin,
Speaker 1: his most famous character, the Little Tramp, which was just
Speaker 1: that a little tramp wearing that kind of hobo garb um.
Speaker 1: That became his absolutely most popular and recognizable character. Um,
Speaker 1: probably one of the most recognizable characters in all of
Speaker 1: cinema in the twentieth century. There are three people who
Speaker 1: could pull off that mustache. Uh, there's Michael Jordan's, there's
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, and then of course there's Hitler, who shows
Speaker 1: up inevitably in any history show. It's true. I would
Speaker 1: say out of the three, Charlie Chaplin is the best
Speaker 1: person to wear what's called a toothbrush mustache. His best film,
Speaker 1: by the way, is The Great Dictator. I recommend people
Speaker 1: watch his very rare speaking role. It's a fantastic monologue.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a precursor to mel Brooks, you know,
Speaker 1: and its satire like. It's really really great. I will
Speaker 1: add a one more name to the toothbrush mustache pull
Speaker 1: off club. That's a weird sounding thing. Um the keyboard
Speaker 1: player for the band Sparks. If you're not familiar, he
Speaker 1: has rocked that mustache since the seventies. Uh, probably despite
Speaker 1: multiple style in stelling. I mean maybe I ought to
Speaker 1: go in a different direction. I want to be very
Speaker 1: clear about The Great Dictator. Uh by Charlie Chaplin. Now,
Speaker 1: as any fans of Charlie Chaplin, no, uh, he was
Speaker 1: you know, the tramp character, and often he was doing
Speaker 1: silent film. However, in these times especially, I recommend everybody.
Speaker 1: Check out the final speech from the great Dictator. I
Speaker 1: would say it is prescient. I would say it's well
Speaker 1: written and it should frighten you. Uh, this is this
Speaker 1: is a tangent and let me not get too political here.
Speaker 1: But as he said, no, Charlie Chaplin dubbed himself the
Speaker 1: little tramp. He never dubbed himself King of the Hobos.
Speaker 1: And that's something that Leon Ray Livingston actually did. We
Speaker 1: have to be careful with the phrase hobo king again,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with Hoboken, New Jersey, because Leon
Speaker 1: Ray Livingston was not core, he didn't have a coronation,
Speaker 1: he was not set like the other the other itinerant
Speaker 1: workers in the population did not say Leon Ray Livingston
Speaker 1: in his forty dollar suit, he's our emperor. No. It
Speaker 1: turns out that Livingston dubbed himself King of the Hobos.
Speaker 1: Mr Livingston, I presume no, that's a different Livingston. I
Speaker 1: presume yeah. He was born to a pretty well off
Speaker 1: family in San Francisco on August in the year of
Speaker 1: Somebody's Lord seventy two. His dad was French, his mom
Speaker 1: was German, and he claims that he was able to
Speaker 1: speak both German, and French fluently at a very early
Speaker 1: age by grade school. Uh, and that he also learned Spanish,
Speaker 1: so he was like he was a very worldly gent. Um.
Speaker 1: And we we know most of what we know about
Speaker 1: Livingston from this book that he wrote, which is actually
Speaker 1: in the public domain. I listened to a little bit
Speaker 1: of an audiobook version of it for this episode. You
Speaker 1: can find it on YouTube. It's like six hours long.
Speaker 1: You can hear the whole thing. And this book in particular,
Speaker 1: I think he wrote a few is called The Tale
Speaker 1: of the Tramp by Leon Ray Livingston, and um, it's
Speaker 1: there's a couple of different parts. It's actually I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's not six hours four hours, but you can find
Speaker 1: that all on one part on YouTube for free right now.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend giving that a listen. Yeah, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: just like his self Coronation, self proclamation, all of what
Speaker 1: we know of of Eingston, or probably the majority of it,
Speaker 1: is based on the books that he wrote. So he's
Speaker 1: at best a biased source, and he's kind of he's
Speaker 1: got some braggadoc show. He's he's sort of building his
Speaker 1: own mythology, which is a very American and very cool
Speaker 1: thing to do. I'm sticking up for him a little
Speaker 1: bit because like Casey, like Nolan, like yours. Truly Livingston
Speaker 1: has an August birthday. Uh it's weird, no, because he
Speaker 1: says he was born in San Francisco, and he actually
Speaker 1: was not born into penury. He was born well to
Speaker 1: do and at age eleven, acting out raging against the machine, uh,
Speaker 1: pulling his whole pink Floyd the wall kind of uh
Speaker 1: scenario led him to a life on the road. The
Speaker 1: story goes that the day after his eleventh birthday, so
Speaker 1: the twenty August, his teacher sent him home with a
Speaker 1: note said, this kid is behaving poorly and your father,
Speaker 1: young Livingston, has to sign this note. You have to
Speaker 1: return it to me. So eleven year old Leon Ray
Speaker 1: Livingston one did not show his father that note. And then,
Speaker 1: according to his book, this was in a philosophy of tramping.
Speaker 1: He spotted his teacher heading towards his house. The next morning,
Speaker 1: he snuck out of the house and then he just
Speaker 1: kept going. That's his origin story. That is an extreme
Speaker 1: reaction to a bad note home from school. I have
Speaker 1: to say, I remember running away from home. I'm doing
Speaker 1: quote fingers here. When I was a kid. I made
Speaker 1: it as far as put putt golf, which was maybe
Speaker 1: a mile from the house, and just was like playing
Speaker 1: video games and and realized, like, I'm out of money now,
Speaker 1: I should probably just go back home. Uh but no, no,
Speaker 1: our boy Livingston went the full mile. Uh, well, the
Speaker 1: the figurative mile. I went a full mile and then
Speaker 1: a full mile back home. Um. But yeah, it's your
Speaker 1: quick question, Ben. Side note, did you ever get a
Speaker 1: bad note at home from teacher or like something along
Speaker 1: those lines and you tried to bury it? You tried
Speaker 1: to like, you know, keep it from your parents with
Speaker 1: the like the misguided notion that they weren't just gonna
Speaker 1: like call I'm a revolutionary at heart. So any behavioral
Speaker 1: disagreements I had with an authority figure I one double
Speaker 1: down on and was fairly assertive about voicing with my parents.
Speaker 1: So I see no use in hiding uh that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But you know, it's a very terrifying situation
Speaker 1: for a lot of us when we're young. Right here
Speaker 1: in the US, a lot of kids are graded on
Speaker 1: a one to one hundred scale for objective measure of success,
Speaker 1: but especially in early grades, a lot of kids were
Speaker 1: graded on let me ask you guys this, Uh did
Speaker 1: you ever get the uh satisfactory not satisfactory ratings for
Speaker 1: behavior as a child? Casey smirking, you get it. You
Speaker 1: know we had like s S plus you It was
Speaker 1: like a thing hanging up on the wall. This is
Speaker 1: like first grade or maybe even kindergarten, and like it
Speaker 1: was it was kind of like soccer rules, like if
Speaker 1: you you know, one one violation, they like pull the
Speaker 1: first card out and like as you go, like you
Speaker 1: would get down to that U card, which would be
Speaker 1: kind of like the yellow card or the red card whatever,
Speaker 1: and and and that that would be it. Like you
Speaker 1: would be dreading the rest of the day because you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna go home with it, and uh, there
Speaker 1: would be a price to pay, Casey on the case. Uh,
Speaker 1: and our boy Livingston definitely paid that price. So he
Speaker 1: was a you uh probably a U plus or you
Speaker 1: minus whatever you want to whichever direction you want to
Speaker 1: go with that, which means the worst. Um and he
Speaker 1: decided he'd had it with school, so he packed up
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber rifle and uh a little bit of
Speaker 1: cash while he could stuff in his pocket some that
Speaker 1: he had stolen from his mom. Um for shame uh
Speaker 1: and uh and some that he had gotten as a
Speaker 1: birthday present from an uncle. Um. He boarded a steamboat
Speaker 1: uh in San Francisco Harbor um and made it to Sacramento,
Speaker 1: where he apparently booked the most expensive hotel in the city.
Speaker 1: He was unaware of this, so he burned through that
Speaker 1: cash that he had very very quickly during this four
Speaker 1: nights stay. Um he had like twenty bucks I think.
Speaker 1: And then there's an interesting, uh, little little tidbit of
Speaker 1: currency exchange here, Ben that I was look confused when
Speaker 1: I first read, but you kind of set me straight. Well,
Speaker 1: it's okay, I'm gonna be honest. I think the guy
Speaker 1: is at best embellishing, at worst lying. Maybe he's got
Speaker 1: a bit of barnum to him, and fans of the
Speaker 1: circus you'll understand the reference there. Uh. So he says
Speaker 1: he stayed at the most expensive hotel in Sacramento and
Speaker 1: it costs him twenty dollars for four nights. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of money back then. But then he talks about
Speaker 1: how he left a one d franc note with a
Speaker 1: bank cashier uh, and he he essentially ran out of
Speaker 1: the bank because the teller we can only presume said, hey,
Speaker 1: you're eleven, what are you doing with one franc? And Uh.
Speaker 1: The weird thing about this is that I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't match up. Far be it for me to
Speaker 1: be a hater. But at this time, it's safe to
Speaker 1: say most eleven year olds did not have twenty U
Speaker 1: s dollars, much less one hundred French dollars or equivalent thereof.
Speaker 1: And so he says that he still had a rifle,
Speaker 1: and he still had a couple of bucks U s dollars,
Speaker 1: we assume, and because he had lost one d frunc
Speaker 1: with the bank hash here he was at his wits end,
Speaker 1: at his young wits end. So he walked to a
Speaker 1: spot along railway, a spot where the train would stop
Speaker 1: for water, and at the train he gave his rifle
Speaker 1: to a to an employee of the train of Brakeman,
Speaker 1: specifically in exchange for the ability to stow away on
Speaker 1: a ride to truck Ee. No no, uh truck e
Speaker 1: t r U c k e E. That's not a
Speaker 1: big metropolis, is it. Yeah? I do think I think
Speaker 1: it's still around. It kind of makes me think of
Speaker 1: places like Barstow or like Modesto, not to malign any
Speaker 1: of these places. But there's sort of a little more.
Speaker 1: You think of California in terms of its metro areas
Speaker 1: in terms of like, you know, a lot of affluence
Speaker 1: and hustling, hustle, but there's a ton of very small,
Speaker 1: kind of more dusty, kind of one horse towns all
Speaker 1: over California. Listeners from California, let us know, have you
Speaker 1: been to truck Ee. We did look it up. It
Speaker 1: does still exist. It looks kind of charming. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a little old timey downtown area. Probably
Speaker 1: hasn't changed much since the the time of this story.
Speaker 1: But he actually didn't make it to truck It. He
Speaker 1: got put off by uh under a brakeman. I guess
Speaker 1: which is the guy that like breaks the train, um
Speaker 1: and win a Muca win Amucca. Gosh, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: emails about this one. I'm gonna go with winn Amucca.
Speaker 1: Uh Nevada. That's in the desert. So he got put again.
Speaker 1: You're right, then we gotta keep taking grains of salt
Speaker 1: with this stuff, because like the whole idea of and
Speaker 1: then I was ejected from the train in the middle
Speaker 1: of the deserts and I had to fed with nothing
Speaker 1: but my pocket knife, and I traded my rifle, and
Speaker 1: I had to you know, red so giants scorpions with
Speaker 1: my bare hands. That's not in here. But you know, well,
Speaker 1: let's just double down on on dude's fantabulism. UM. So,
Speaker 1: around four fifty miles from San Francisco is where he
Speaker 1: was let out here. Uh So he decided that he
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of hone his survival chops even further. So,
Speaker 1: you know, he didn't have the best luck in this
Speaker 1: first run. He realized he was, you know, he was caught,
Speaker 1: and he needed to do a better job of hiding
Speaker 1: himself and kind of learning some of the rules of
Speaker 1: the road or the rails as it were. Um. But
Speaker 1: he liked it. He got a taste for it, and
Speaker 1: he decided that he this is the life for him.
Speaker 1: He was going to start in earnest a career, I
Speaker 1: guess as as a hobo. UM. And that's when he
Speaker 1: really just went ham on on, hopping the rails and
Speaker 1: writing all over creation, taking these itinerant jobs that we
Speaker 1: talked about, UM, crossing the country right as the industrial
Speaker 1: rev alution was really taking hold. UM again, a lot
Speaker 1: of his braggadocia would come out and in his writings,
Speaker 1: and he uh did boast that he traveled five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand miles on trains while only spending a little over
Speaker 1: seven bucks on fairs. Five hundred thousand. I don't know
Speaker 1: about that. What do he come on? That's wow? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. His experience was not the average experience
Speaker 1: you know of many itinerant workers, many migrants. But you're right, Noll,
Speaker 1: he spent decades on the road, that part is true.
Speaker 1: He also took to writing about his uh, writing fanciful
Speaker 1: stories about his time on the road, and he eventually
Speaker 1: published about Baker's dozen books concerning his travels. The most
Speaker 1: through one, I guess the compendium is a book called
Speaker 1: Life and Adventures of a Number One, America's most celebrated tramp.
Speaker 1: This was published in nineteen ten. At that point, he
Speaker 1: had been on the road for almost thirty years, and
Speaker 1: it includes a lot of early tales of his hobo origin.
Speaker 1: And if this were an album, one of the breakout
Speaker 1: tracks of Life and Adventures of a Number One is
Speaker 1: this story about him working on a British trade ship
Speaker 1: that left New Orleans for Belize. Uh. And the idea
Speaker 1: here is that he took the job, but then he
Speaker 1: eventually jumped ship and began working at a mahogany camp,
Speaker 1: meaning a camp that was set up to harvest maha.
Speaker 1: A Guinny would also going back to what we said
Speaker 1: in the beginning of this episode, A number one is
Speaker 1: his hobo name, and it plays a big part in
Speaker 1: our ability to prove that at least some of his travels,
Speaker 1: In fact, many of his travels actually happens. So the
Speaker 1: guy is not just sitting at home in San Francisco
Speaker 1: writing some sort of fan fiction about an alternate version
Speaker 1: of himself. He really is on the road, and some
Speaker 1: of his details actually makes sense, even if they are fabulous,
Speaker 1: as you said, even if they are a bit embellished.
Speaker 1: But believe Central America, that's pretty crazy, right to get
Speaker 1: to there in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: A man after your own heart, Ben, I mean, you
Speaker 1: had some kind of tramp like days in Central America
Speaker 1: yourself or South America. You tell some great stories about
Speaker 1: about those years in your life that that I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like you've got a kindred spirit here in
Speaker 1: Mr Livingstone, No comment, no comment, Okay, fair enough, And
Speaker 1: this period in Livingstone's life really made for some fantastic tales.
Speaker 1: His time in the British Mahogany camp. Um, he even
Speaker 1: you know, was able to kind of report on some
Speaker 1: of the conditions in these camps, which, as we can imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, if you know anything about this time in um,
Speaker 1: the history of of labor, uh not good, not a
Speaker 1: lot of oversight. Uh, And he was able to kind
Speaker 1: of report on some of that. He apparently multiple times
Speaker 1: attempted to desert his employers and uh and kind of
Speaker 1: extort them, uh for the money that would get him home. Um.
Speaker 1: Talked about things like eating roasted baboon and uh a
Speaker 1: sort of maybe a drama to over aramatized version of
Speaker 1: malaria that he referred to as the black swamp fever. Uh.
Speaker 1: Never heard that used anywhere outside of this this gentleman's writing. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know again it was all this kind of
Speaker 1: really you know, cartoony, romanticized, really flowery writing, very self aggrandizing.
Speaker 1: Who knew that a guy that dubbed himself the Hobo
Speaker 1: King and a number one would potentially have an overinflated
Speaker 1: sense of uh self? But it makes for some really
Speaker 1: entertaining writing. And this is some of the stuff he
Speaker 1: wrote about some of the really tragic socio economic conditions
Speaker 1: of life in this Mahogany camp um, making references to
Speaker 1: the food that he was forced to eat as well. Quote.
Speaker 1: I became acquainted with roasted baboons, fried parrots, turtle at
Speaker 1: armadillos Stew's uh tap here steak tape tap taper t
Speaker 1: a p I R. I don't know that tap here cool.
Speaker 1: Should have just quite while I was had iguan uh
Speaker 1: an enormous and ugly tree lizard. He says, monkey, soup, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And he describes one particularly let's say, treacherous journey that
Speaker 1: he took up river. He says, we embarked in dugouts, canoes, right, men, women, children, dogs,
Speaker 1: household effects, provisions, etcetera. He's fond of this, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: paddled up the Rio Hondo. After several hours, passing through
Speaker 1: mangrove swamps, we came to higher ground and then we
Speaker 1: only could use poles as the river became crooked, shallow
Speaker 1: and full of rapids. Alligators and enormous turtles slid from
Speaker 1: the banks as we approached them, and at night, when
Speaker 1: we camped on the river bank around the fires, we
Speaker 1: could hear the cries of panthers, mountain lions, wildcats, monkeys,
Speaker 1: and coyotes in the dark jungle. Good stuff. So the
Speaker 1: problem with that passage, I think what you read starts
Speaker 1: with we embarked in dugouts and ends at coyotes in
Speaker 1: the dark. Goal. So that whole thing is is one quote. Uh.
Speaker 1: The problem with that quote is that it I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say plagiarizes, but it echoes on earlier account
Speaker 1: made by a guy him Trade or Horn about a
Speaker 1: river trip in Gabon, in the Agoe River or on
Speaker 1: the Agoe River. So we don't know how true it is.
Speaker 1: We we know that he went to Belize, probably, but
Speaker 1: we don't know if he actually ate monkey soup or
Speaker 1: if he's quoting another book that he read. According to
Speaker 1: the story. While he's in this Mahogany camp, he gets
Speaker 1: his first letter from home, which means that he is
Speaker 1: still somehow in contact with his family and his kinfolk
Speaker 1: as they say in the South in San Francisco, and
Speaker 1: his parents are giving him the equivalent of a five
Speaker 1: star rating or casey to your point, they're giving him
Speaker 1: an s plus for his disappearances. Uh, they say, we
Speaker 1: are so delighted to hear from you. We thought you
Speaker 1: were dead, but you're super cool. Good job, kiddo. And then,
Speaker 1: according to his story, he writes back to them and
Speaker 1: he says, yeah, I'm having adventures. I ate monkey soup.
Speaker 1: I would have been sailing around Central America and rivers
Speaker 1: and the ocean and such. Also, I need a little
Speaker 1: bit of scratch to make my way home, even though
Speaker 1: I'm having the time of my life. And he writes
Speaker 1: these incredibly uh evocative descriptions. He details his day to
Speaker 1: day life to his parents, where he says, I'm eating
Speaker 1: all kinds of new fruit. Have you heard of java?
Speaker 1: What about breadfruit? Etcetera. Look at these butterflies I saw.
Speaker 1: The birds are awesome. People have treated me like the best.
Speaker 1: It's amazing here. All my coworkers are cool. And I
Speaker 1: made myself popular by making everybody else fat. That's basically
Speaker 1: what he says. And Uh, I also gave people a
Speaker 1: deal at the company's store. And so now I've got
Speaker 1: all these souvenirs. Mom, dad says a number one. I'm
Speaker 1: having an amazing time. Also, give me money so I
Speaker 1: can go home. You see the discrepancy there, You see
Speaker 1: how the story doesn't quite add up if you're having
Speaker 1: that much of a good time, I one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: million percent do. And I gotta say I can't even
Speaker 1: fault him for it, because the stuff really is pretty
Speaker 1: fun to read. And I could see this absolutely catching
Speaker 1: the American kind of zeitgeist by storm. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: so much more are left to tell about this guy,
Speaker 1: Ben to the point where we didn't really know this
Speaker 1: going in, you know how we roll. But we have
Speaker 1: decided to cut this into two parter um, and we
Speaker 1: we teach some stuff at the top of the show
Speaker 1: about hobo code and about you know, the stuff that
Speaker 1: we had researched into that with stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know, um, And and we're gonna kind of
Speaker 1: leave you without following through on that, but we promised
Speaker 1: that we will in the next episode, and I think
Speaker 1: you're going to really enjoy it in the meantime. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks to super producer Casey Pegram Alex Williams, who composed
Speaker 1: our theme. Christopher hasciotis here in spirit. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: This is the first part of a two part series.
Speaker 1: We are leaving Livingstone in Belize, which I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: using as a catchphrase for different things. So leaving Livingstone
Speaker 1: in Belize, learn more about his further adventures, learn why
Speaker 1: he is called a number one, and learn how he
Speaker 1: coordinated himself as the quote unquote hobo King. Big thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our main man or magnetic North of Research,
Speaker 1: Gay Bluesia, who still refuses to tell us how to
Speaker 1: pronounce his last name. I respect that, and big big
Speaker 1: thanks to Eaves Jeffcoat, our peer podcaster. Big thanks to
Speaker 1: the trains, which are imperfect but play a huge role
Speaker 1: in the development of these United States. I mainly run
Speaker 1: on time. Um, who else? Anybody else? Thanks to Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Where's that guy? I hope he's okay. He seems so
Speaker 1: lonely last time. UM, we got you, Jonathan. We will
Speaker 1: we We did change up the zoom code, but we
Speaker 1: will send you those new digits very soon. Uh, and
Speaker 1: hope for you to to zoom bomb us in the
Speaker 1: very near future. I look forward to it, honestly, because frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling a little isolated to we're back to lockdown
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. Um, so a little bit of healthy,
Speaker 1: mischievous ribbing from the old quister himself would probably do
Speaker 1: us all good. We'll see you next topix. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.